A Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway train climbs onto an engine at Nantes, a few kilometres from Lac-Mégantic, Quebec near the border with Maine. According to the mayor of Nantes, the oil cars visible here were part of Saturday’s runaway oil-filled train that led to explosion and fireball, killing at least 5 people. About 40 people are still missing.John Kenney
/ The Gazette

The chairman of the company whose train exploded in downtown Lac-Mégantic says he is certain it was tampered with. In this photo, an inspector from a private insurance company (residential and commercial) taking pictures of a train carrying oil which is stopped at Nantes, Quebec, twelve kilometres away from Lac-Mégantic where a runaway oil-filled train led to an explosion and fireball, killing at least 5 people in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, east of Montreal. About 40 people are still missing.Marie-France Coallier
/ Marie-France Coallier

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LAC-MÉGANTIC - The chairman of the company whose train exploded in downtown Lac-Mégantic says he is certain it was tampered with.

“We have evidence of this,” said Ed Burkhardt, of Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway. “But this is an item that needs further investigation. We need to talk to some people we believe to have knowledge of this.”

On Sunday, however, the company isssued a statement saying their officials had been so far unable to conduct their own investigation.

A probe by the Transportation Safety Board is currently underway to determine what caused a parked, unattended locomotive to roll towards the town of 6,000 and derail in the city centre. TSB investigators have inspected several of the locomotives involved, as well as obtained two black boxes that contain data about the train’s brakes, throttle position and speed at the time of the incident.

So far, the majority of the questions surrounding the cause of the accident have focused on a fire that occurred on a MMA locomotive in Nantes, 11 kilometres outside Lac-Mégantic. The fire apparently started after the train’s conductor parked, applied the brakes and retired from his 12-hour shift.

Burkhardt maintains all operating rules were complied with, and said his company has begun its own internal inquiry, which has been limited by rescue efforts and parallel investigations underway since Saturday. He does not believe that the event was malicious or an act of terrorism.

“We want to know what they know,” said Burkhardt. “There are a number of missing pieces here ... but we’d like to have a complete idea about the cause. We are prepared to go in and do this very quickly; as soon as we can gain access to people and to the site.”

Burkhardt said about a dozen of his employees have been at-the-ready in the small town since Saturday.

“I don’t like hearing statements that we don’t have people there,” he said, declining to give further information about his team on the ground. “We’ve been asking for a meeting with the municipal government for the last three days.”

But his company has been criticized for its initial response to the incident, and for being slow to speak publicly. The first statement on the incident arrived 36 hours after the derailment and explosion demolished the downtown core.

“I think that speaks for itself,” said the NDP’s Thomas Mulcair, leader of the federal opposition, when he toured the town on Sunday.

And François Legault, head of the provincial Coalition Avenir Québec party and former president of Air Transat, also weighed in on Monday about corporate responsibility. “In a disaster,” he said, ”the president’s job is to be there — even if he doesn’t have all the answers.”

For his part, Burkhardt, speaking by phone from Chicago, said he had been active all weekend in the aftermath of the explosion and that he was planning a trip to Lac-Mégantic in the near future. He also said that more help was on the way.

“We’re planning, as soon as we can agree with the town, to establish an office as quickly as we can,” he said. “If I’m a business and it’s burned down, I want someone to pay for that loss. It’s as simple as that, and that’s what we’re prepared to do.

“But that business or home owner has to have a place where they can come and sit down with somebody and get the process underway. We’re not stonewalling anybody. We want to settle this as quickly as possible so people can move on.”

Early Monday morning, Lac-Mégantic Mayor Colette Roy-Laroche said she’d be meeting with representatives from the MMA for a first time later in the day.

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